D.Stillwell

Hello to all, it's unfortunately that time when my car has finally decided to crap out on me and leave me stranded (for all of about 4 hrs yesterday, and then drove home just fine). Had this car almost 2 years now, no problems, especially nothing like this and never any signs of it.

So I drive to a friend's house yesterday, about 40min highway drive. I'm there for literally 10-15min and then I have to turn around and go back. Get back in the car and start it up, the car cranks and starts up just fine, out of nowhere my idle starts jumping and car stalls.
Consequent attempts to start the car had the same result, car would always start right up but then died after a min or two of running at idle (this got progressively better as time went on). Tried giving it some gas in the beginning which works many times, but this is clearly a different problem and only made the car stall right away instead of running at idle (around 600 rpm - very low and weak).

So after a few hours of diagnosing and trying to find the problem, the stalling got better and now car would run in idle no problem, for a full 5-10 min (RPM got progressively higher from 600 closer to 713 where it should be). The main thing was that my throttle was dead the whole time, felt very much like it wasn't getting enough FP in there to keep it going. So in other words, when the car ran in idle, and I tried to hit the gas it would just make it stall and engine felt very shaky like it was torque movement (I could've just flooded the engine with fuel at this point, trying to start so many times).

So far I've re-checked all my plugs and coils (plugs were recently done and are brand new, NGK Iridium IX) and everything definitely looked good. Plus the car starts great, you can tell the spark is real nice and crisp on start up. The fuel is being primed, I can hear it when the key is at IGN ON position. I checked plugs/coils first only because they were done recently and you always try to eliminate any problem from something you just did. To finish the story of last night, after 4 hours of starting and dying (and progressively improving idle RPM), the car finally started, and finally I could tell something clicked over because now I hit the gas everything was fine, pulled out of the driveway and drove home no problem, car ran perfect, problem has not came back today, no CEL ever came on, no codes at all ever came up, no stored and no pending codes, no anything and I've been trying to get a code out of that thing since last night multiple times but no luck.

Car starts, runs fine right now, the problem from yesterday has not came back. Next thing I'm doing this morning is taking out rear seat and gonna check fuel pump/filter/pressure test. Any other ideas you guys have?

I was thinking this may be related to electrical, sensor or something like the TPS/crank sensor/etc. What do you guys think? Any ideas? I know very similar things have happened to others on the forums and I did read a bunch of those threads just now but my problem definitely seems a bit different.

I really appreciate everyone's help! Going to the car now, be back to read your responses in a few. Thanks guys!

D.Stillwell

Quick update:

Was outside inspecting the engine just now and to my surprise discovered that my intake breather hose that goes to the front valve cover (still OEM hose, old as ****) has a deteriorating connection @ the valve cover, the connection @ the helmholtz looks good, but you can see the other connection is bad, there is actually a very tiny moist spot in that area around the hose clamp and nipple/connection from blow by mist.

And you can tell that it's very fresh, so this connection issue must've just happened in the last day or so. The OEM metal clamp that goes around the connector nipple seems to have eaten through the rubber somehow and caused the seal to break. Can a bad intake breather hose have caused the stalling last night?

Any ideas guys? Appreciate the help, thanks much.